Test procedures for transmitter-receiver circuits are known from the prior art. The purpose of these test procedures is to check, after certain steps of the manufacturing process and at the end of the manufacturing process, whether the circuit, still set on its silicon slice or wafer, is operating properly and whether the claimed features are actually present. Do to this, the circuits are thus removed from the production line to be placed in the test device(s). Electrodes are then arranged so that they are in contact with the contact terminals of the circuit. Then, various electric signals are applied to said circuit, via the electrodes, to start the transmitter-receiver circuit and thus test its features.
One drawback of these procedures is that they are expensive. Indeed, this drawback arises from the fact that existing devices for testing circuits on a wafer are used both to check whether the circuits are working and also whether the intrinsic features of the transmitter-receiver circuit comply with the theory. To do this, it is therefore necessary to have versatile devices that can test all of the features. This versatility means these devices require state of the art technology. This complexity and versatility therefore have repercussions on the selling price.
Moreover, the procedure in itself is expensive. The procedure and the devices used mean that the circuits are tested completely, i.e. all of the features of the circuit are tested to see whether the circuit meets the expected specifications. Consequently, with this procedure, it is not possible simply to check whether the circuit functions are working properly. The functions test necessarily goes through a complete circuit test. However, it is advantageous to test the functions at different stages of manufacture so as to detect faulty circuits earlier.
Thus, if all of the circuit features have to be tested at each circuit function test, this causes a not inconsiderable waste of time and therefore financial waste.